By Klaus Jakobsen, developer of A Decent Remote If you are here because something called “TV Remote” or “Universal Remote” is charging your card, this page is the whole answer, in order: cancel it, work out which app it was, then ask for a refund if the charge was unexpected.
How do I cancel a TV remote app subscription on iPhone?
Four taps.
- Open Settings
- Tap your name at the very top
- Tap Subscriptions
- Tap the remote app, then Cancel Subscription
If there is no Subscriptions row on that screen, take the other route: open the App Store, tap your profile picture in the top corner, then Subscriptions. Both land on the same list.
Cancelling does not take away what you already paid for. You keep access until the end of the current billing period, so there is nothing to gain by waiting until the last day, and waiting is exactly how people get billed one more time.
Deleting the app does not cancel anything
This is the most expensive misunderstanding in the category, so it gets its own heading.
The subscription lives on your Apple Account, not on your phone. Deleting the app removes the icon and changes nothing about the billing. People delete a remote app in frustration, assume that ended it, and find the charge again weeks later. If you have already deleted the app, you can still cancel: the entry stays in the Subscriptions list.
Which app is actually charging me?
Your bank statement will say APPLE.COM/BILL and nothing else, so it cannot answer this. Apple’s Subscriptions screen is the only place that names the app.
That matters more here than in most categories, because these apps have deliberately similar names. Among the ten biggest universal remote apps there are two called “Universal TV Remote Control”, two called “Universal Remote TV Control” and one called “Universal TV Remote”, from five different developers. Match the icon, not the name, if two entries look alike.
How do I get a refund?
Refunds go through Apple, not through the app. The developer cannot approve one and cannot block one either.
- Go to reportaproblem.apple.com in any browser
- Sign in with your Apple Account
- Find the charge, choose Request a refund, and pick a reason
- Submit, and wait. Apple usually decides within a few days
“I did not mean to subscribe” and “I did not know this would renew” are ordinary, recognised reasons to ask. Apple decides case by case, and a first unexpected charge on a subscription is the situation the process exists for. There is no guarantee, but asking costs nothing and takes about two minutes.
Cancel first, then request the refund. Cancelling stops the bleeding; the refund is about money already taken.
Why did this cost so much more than I expected?
Almost always because the plan was billed weekly rather than monthly.
We read the App Store listings of the ten biggest universal remote apps. Nine of them sell a weekly plan, and it is the plan the App Store shows first, because that is the slot the most-bought purchase occupies. A weekly price is designed to read as small:
| Weekly price | What a year of it costs |
|---|---|
| $2.99 | $155 |
| $4.99 | $259 |
| $6.99 | $363 |
| $9.99 | $519 |
| $14.90 | $775 |
Every one of those apps also sells a yearly plan, between $19.99 and $39.99, for the same product. It is on the same paywall, usually smaller and further down. The full breakdown of who charges what is in our price comparison of all ten.
How do I avoid this next time?
Three habits, in order of how much they save you.
- Read the billing period, not the price. “$6.99” means nothing on its own. “$6.99 per week” is $363 a year.
- Look for the yearly option before you tap. It is almost always on the same screen, below the highlighted plan.
- Pair before you pay. Install, connect it to your actual television, press some buttons. Connectivity is the entire product, and an app that takes money before proving it can reach your TV has told you what it optimises for.
And if you only own one brand of television, you may not need to pay at all. The official Roku, SmartThings, LG ThinQ and Fire TV apps are genuinely free, and Apple TV owners already have a remote in Control Center. The full list of what is actually free is here.
If the app you are cancelling is ours
Same four taps, no different, and no hard feelings.
A Decent Remote is ours, and we would rather you cancelled cleanly than fought a dark pattern to get out. There is no retention flow, no “are you sure” maze, and nothing in the app that can stop an Apple cancellation, because no app can. We also do not sell a weekly plan, which is the thing that generates most of the searches that bring people to this page.
If something did not work with your TV, tell us which brand and model. Pairing failures on real hardware are how the app gets built, and a cancellation with a reason attached is more useful to us than a silent one.
